In the Footprints of the Padres

by Charles Warren Stoddard

HAVE read somewhere in the pages of a veracious author how, five or six years before my day, he had ridden through chaparral from Yerba Buena to the Mission Dolores with the howl of the wolf for accompaniment. Yerba Buena is now San Francisco, and the mission is a part of the city; it is not even a suburb.

In 1855 there were two plank-roads leading from the city to the Mission Dolores; on each of these omnibuses ran every half hour. The plank-road was a straight and narrow way, cut through acres of chaparral—thickets of low evergreen oaks,—and leading over forbidding wastes of sand. To stretch a figure, it was as if the sea-of-sand had been divided in the midst, so that the children of Israel might have passed dry-shod, and the Egyptians pursuing them might have been swallowed up in the billows of sand that flowed over them at intervals.

Somewhere among those treacherous dunes—of them it might indeed be said that "the mountains skipped like rams and the little hills like lambs,"—somewhere thereabout was located the once famous but now fabulous Pipesville, the country-seat of my old friend, "Jeems Pipes of Pipesville." He was longer and better known to the world as Stephen C. Massett, composer of the words and music of that once most popular of songs, "When the Moon on the Lake is Beaming," as well as many another charming ballad.

Stephen C. Massett, a most delightful companion and a famous diner-out, give a concert of vocal music interspersed with recitations and imitations, in the school-house that stood at the northwest corner of the plaza. This was on Monday evening, June 22, 1849; and it was the first public entertainment, the first regular amusement, ever given in San Francisco. The only piano in the country was engaged for the occasion; the tickets were three dollars each, and the proceeds yielded over five hundred dollars; although it cost sixteen dollars to have the piano used on the occasion moved from one side of the plaza, or Portsmouth Square, to the other. On a copy of the programme which now lies before me I find this line: "N.B.—Front seats reserved for ladies!" History records that there were but four ladies present—probably the only four in the town at the time. Massett died in New York city a few months ago,—a man who had friends in every country under the sun, and, I believe, no enemy.

I remember the Mission Dolores as a detached settlement with a pronounced Spanish flavor. There was one street worth mentioning, and only one. It was lined with low-walled adobe houses, roofed with the red curved tiles which add so much to the adobe houses that otherwise would be far from picturesque. The adobe is a sun-baked brick; it is mud-color; its walls look as if they were moulded of mud. The adobes were the native California habitations. We spoke of them as adobes; although it would probably be as correct, etymologically, to refer to brick houses as bricks.

There were a few ramshackle hotels at the mission; for in the early days it seemed as if everybody either boarded or took in boarders, and many families lived for years in hotels rather than attempt to keep house in the wilds of San Francisco. The mission was about one house deep each side of the main street. You might have turned a corner and found yourself face to face with the cattle in the meadow. As for the goats, they met you at the doorway and followed you down the street like dogs.

At the top of this street stood the mission church and what few mission buildings were left for the use of the Fathers. The church and the grounds were the most interesting features of the place, and it was a favorite resort of the citizens of San Francisco; yet it most likely would not have been were the church the sole attraction. Here, in appropriate enclosures, there were bull-fighting, bear-baiting, and horse-racing. Many duels were fought here, and some of them were so well advertised that they drew almost as well as a cock-fight. Cock-fighting was a special Sunday diversion. Through the mission ran the highway to the pleasant city of San José; it ran through a country unsurpassed in beauty and fertility. Above the mission towered the mission peaks, and about it the hillslopes were mantled with myriads of wild flowers, the splendor and variety of which have added to the fame of California.

The mission church was never handsome; but the facade with the old bells hanging in their niches, and the almost naive simplicity of its architectural adornment, are extremely pleasing. It is a long, narrow, dingy nave one enters. Its walls of adobe do not retain their coats of whitewash for any length of time; in the rainy season they are damp and almost clammy. The floor is of beaten earth; the Stations upon the walls of the rudest description; the narrow windows but dimly light the interior, and rather add to than dispel the gloom that has been gathering there for ages. The high altar is, of course, in striking contrast with all that dark interior: it is over-decorated in the Mexican manner—flowers, feathers, tinsel ornaments, tall candlesticks elaborately gilded; all the statues examples of the primitive art that appealed strongly to the uncultivated eye; and all the adornments gay, gaudy, if not garish. Do you wonder at this? When you enter the old church at the Mission Dolores you should recall its history, and picture in your imagination the people for whom the mission was established.

The Franciscans founded their first mission in California at San Diego in 1769. The Mission Dolores was founded on St. Francis' Day, 1776. To found a mission was a serious matter; yet one and twenty missions were in the full tide of success before the good work was abandoned. The friars were the first fathers of the land: they did whatever was done for it and for the people who originally inhabited it. They explored the country lying between the coast range and the sea. They set apart large tracts of land for cultivation and for the pasturing of flocks and herds. For a long time Old and New Spain contributed liberally to what was known as the Pious Fund of California. The fund was managed by the Convent of San Fernando and certain trustees in Mexico, and the proceeds transmitted from the city of Mexico to the friars in California.